


careful calculations

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Mutual Pining, One Shot, Romantic Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22370362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: Boba Fett is a logical man. His heart is not.
Relationships: Boba Fett/Leia Organa
Comments: 6
Kudos: 89





	careful calculations

Leia tells Boba she loves him in a thousand ways. She whispers it to him and calls to him and kisses him when words won’t do. Her smile says it, even when she is silent. It is how she greets him and how she leaves him, every time. Even her touch says it, the way her lips linger on the hollow between his shoulder blades, the way her fingers trace whorls on his bare skin.

But more than any other way, she tells him with her words.

“I love you,” she says, and every time, it is enough to make his heart stutter, as if hit by some new and tortuous poisonous dart.

He never tells her the same thing. He never falls asleep before her. Truly, he only remains in the bed long enough for her to drift off, before he slips away, to a safer place to rest, if he ever even allows himself to rest.

Most nights, he doesn’t.

He’s a bounty hunter, after all, and that sort of work doesn’t wait for the light of whatever sun will soon shine on whatever planet they’d briefly met on. No, his work, like hers, is constant and fickle and dangerous.

Unlike hers, his is inherently selfish.

“I love you,” she says, and every time, it comes as a shock to Boba, as if every law of mathematics, every guiding principle in his life, is shattered with those three words. Every time, it is unexpected, but not unwanted.

Because he is selfish and takes her love, her words, without being able to offer the same in return.

Maybe that’s why they work together so well. Because she is selfless, dedicated, giving, and he is selfish and tough and guarded. Their flaws (because he sees her selflessness, her willingness to work herself to the bone for a cause that will never care for her the same way, as a flaw) are complements to the other’s. His selfishness keeps her safe. He protects her from the shadows, more than she’ll ever know.

Her generosity is what ensnared him in the first place. She’d found him injured from a job for once unrelated to the war, nursed him back to health… and he found himself in debt to a beautiful, incredible woman.

That had been five years ago, on Hoth. Now, the war seemed nearly over, but his feelings for her were far from through.

Boba had promised himself he would never lose anything he cared about again. He’d thought that would be easy, that he would simply care about credits, and credits alone, and that would keep him safe. When Leia had appeared as a complication, he’d told himself he’d keep this simple too. He’d enjoy her company when they were together and ignore her existence when they were apart.

Like now. He sat in the Slave I’s cockpit, staring out at the emptiness of hyperspace, trying hard not to think about Leia. Where she was. What she was doing. If she was happy.

It was that last thing that bothered him the most. In the past year, it hadn’t been enough to keep her safe, or, if he allowed himself to be crude, keep her satisfied in bed. No, Boba had found himself craving something more, something deeper and more dangerous.

He wanted Leia to be _happy._

He wanted to see her smile, to hear her laugh. He wanted and he hated himself for wanting.

“I love you,” she had said, before she had fallen asleep that last night together. “I love you. You know that, right?”

He had nodded.

“Good,” she replied. “Then I am happy.”

But she hadn’t sounded happy. He hadn’t gotten the reputation he had without being able to read people’s emotions, picking through all those subtle clues to discern the truth.

Leia had said she’d loved him a hundred times before, but this was the first time she hadn’t sounded happy to say that.

He rubbed his face. The Mandalorian helmet on his dashboard stared back at him, as if in silent judgement.

But was it judging him for caring? Or for being such a fierfeking idiot?

Leia wasn’t happy. It was his fault. He wanted her to be happy.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered to the empty space on the ship. “What am I afraid of?”

His own memories supplied the answer. Red sand, whirling in a ghostly wind. The flash of a purple blade. His own wordless scream, echoing from a lifetime ago. Watching the worst occur and being powerless to stop it.

But he wasn’t powerless. Not now.

When the ship dropped out of hyperspace, a little while later, Boba punched in the comm code. He didn’t trust the holo connection, any more than he trusted his own composure, so he kept his voice low and the holo off. “Leia.”

“Boba?” she asked, sounding clearly surprised. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want you to die.”

The words hung heavy in the air and something embarrassingly like a blush colored the bounty hunter’s cheeks. That hadn’t been… quite… what he’d meant to say.

“Am I in danger of doing so?” Leia asked. He could practically hear the sound of her eyebrow quirking up.

“No.”

“So it was just a general sort of wish?”

“Yeah.” A pause. “No.”

“Are _you_ in danger?” Leia asked.

He shook his head, remembered the holo connection was off, then said, again, “no.”

“Would you like to give me further information then?”

“No.” Boba leaned back in the chair. Once more he thinks of calculations, of costs, of all of the ways he used to measure his own happiness. Once more, he finds that the math no longer works, that there can be no sum to this addition of the heart. Once more, he wonders how he's supposed to shift the course of his life as if it was as simple as charting a new course to a new planet. “That was all. Fett, out.”

He hit the end call button. That had been a failure in more ways than he could count. He nearly hoped this job would take him a good long while, keeping him away from her, and his own embarrassment.

Of course, that didn’t happen. The mark was an easy catch, the bounty an easy payment. That math, at least, remains simple. The payment is equal to the risks he took on and the speed of his success. There was no surprise, no unknown figures. It was neat and precise and exactly the way he liked his work to be.

It was only when Boba returned to the ship that he found a singular message waiting for him which once more threw all his careful calculations into disarray.

From her, of course, because no one else would ever leave a message for him on that channel.

No one else even knew that channel existed. It was somehow more private of a thing to share than even his own face.

And what he found, in the message, was just as private.

Leia’s voice, recorded, saying, _I don’t want you to die, either, Boba. And I know what you meant when you said that. Thank you._

He told it to her again, that night, when he returned to her bed. This time, she smiled, cupping his face with her warm hands. Kissing him with the heat of a passion he’d never thought he’d experience. Making him burn with a thousand things he’d never known before her. This time, he managed to say, “don’t leave me.”

“I won’t,” Leia replied.

He hated his own selfishness in that moment. Hated that every time he tried to say it, it became a command, an order. “I want to say more,” he tried, his words failing him before even his courage did. “I want to say it like you do.”

“But you’re not me.” Leia kissed his forehead. “And that’s why I love you. Even if you never say it back.”

‘I’m going to,” Boba promised her. “I will. One day.”

“You don’t have to.”

“It might take me a lifetime.”

A shy smile crept over Leia’s face. “I’d be all right with that, I suppose.”

This time, it was Boba who raised the eyebrow. “You sure about that?”

“Sure as I’ll ever be.” Leia made a little half shrug with one shoulder. “I do mean what I say, after all.”

“So do I.” Was this it, then? The completion of his failure to protect his heart? The crumbling of the shields he’d held for so long? If so, why did it feel so much more like happiness than he’d ever thought it would?

Why did this sacrifice feel so sweet?

Boba stared at her, taking in her soft eyes, her kind lips, the gentle way she watched him. He imagined seeing that face every morning, feeling those lips kiss him goodnight every night. He weighed each of those dreams against every credit he’d ever earned and found the money lacking.

He ran through a thousand calculations and found that Leia was the solution in every sum.

“I’ll say it,” he muttered, his voice a growl, not from anger, but from holding back all of those emotions now churning below the surface, threatening to break free. “I swear it. I’ll say it to you one day.”

“Then I will happily wait for you to do so.” Leia smiled, finally, that true, real smile that meant she was happy once more. The smile that meant he had somehow succeeded, even if it had meant failing in his own goals. The smile he had realized he wanted more than ten thousand credits.

This time, it was Boba who kissed her with all the passion of a life now lived for another. Kissed her like she was all he needed in the galaxy. Kissed her and meant everything with that simple kiss.

Kissed her and said with his actions what he couldn’t say with his words.


End file.
